WorkReady Career Services

Quality Framework

DSD/16/41350

Contents

Purpose of this Framework 2

Target audience and stakeholders 3

Benefits of implementing the Framework 4

Applying a balanced approach 5

Conducting the assessment – a step-by-step approach 7

Step 1. Deciding where to start 7

Step 2. Reviewing and assessing 8

a) Collecting evidence 8

b) Assessing the evidence 8

Step 3. Action planning 11

Step 4. Implementing changes and acting on results 12

Using the Framework to build on your success 13

Glossary 14

Acronyms 16

Appendix 1 – The Quality Framework for Career Development Services 17

1. Governance and accountability 17

2. Business operations 20

3. Participant engagement and service delivery 23

4. Relationships 24

Appendix 2 – Assessment template (Sample) 25

Appendix 3 – Action plan template 26

Appendix 4 – Mapping to key career industry quality documents 27

Key document 1: CICA Guiding Principles for Career Development Services 27

Key document 2: CICA Guiding Principles for Career Information Products 31

Appendix 5 - Evidence Examples 33

Purpose of this Framework

The Quality Framework (Framework) for Department of State Development funded career services supports Grantees and service providers to assess the quality of their career development services, and identify opportunities to improve.

High quality and coordinated career development services support a demand-driven training system, by assisting individuals to make well-informed decisions on their education, training and careers that are aligned with local employer and labour market demand.

There are many South Australians who participate in and benefit from career services. This Framework helps services to consider what is working well and opportunities for improvement; and ensures that participants, no matter where they reside, receive a consistently high quality service.

This Framework is designed to support Career Development Services to consider not only what they do, but how well they do it. It’s not an approach that simply seeks to ‘tick boxes’ – it’s about identifying where things are working well and where there are opportunities for improvement, and using this to continually enhance outcomes for all stakeholders.

This Framework draws together the principles and standards of key quality documents for the career industry – the Career Industry Council of Australia’s (CICA) Guiding Principles for Career Development Services and Career Information Products, Professional Standards for Australian Career Development Practitioners and the Australian Blueprint for Career Development (ABCD). These documents have been developed to promote the quality of career development services and products.

In a quality service, all roles and functions are interrelated. This Framework consolidates key quality documents for the career industry, and strengthens them with a strategic management perspective in order to:

1)  Help services review their compliance against the Funding Deed

2)  Provide consistently high quality services.

This guide contains:

·  Background and context of the Framework

·  The Quality Framework (Appendix 1)

·  A step-by-step guide of how to undertake an assessment of your services using the Framework

·  Templates to conduct an assessment using the Framework and determine priority areas for action (Appendix 2)

·  Templates to support action to address priority areas for improvement (Appendix 3)

·  Mapping of the Framework to key career industry quality documents (Appendix 4)

·  Examples of evidence to assist in meeting assessment criteria (Appendix 5)

Target audience and stakeholders

The Quality Framework has been developed for Grantees who are responsible for administering and delivering career services. It should be used by Grantees; however, its application should be guided by those who plan, deliver, manage and evaluate services.

In determining your current position and areas for improvement, it is important to seek the views of and involve a range of stakeholders. Input should be invited from:

·  Those responsible for service governance setting strategic directions for the service

·  Managers and leaders responsible for managing resources, planning and review and operational integrity

·  Staff providing administrative and other types of support to the service

·  Staff directly involved in delivering career development services

·  Participants that have used or are currently using the service

·  Potential participants of the service (members of the local community)

·  Other local services, organisations and enterprises that add value and can have value added by the Career Development Service.

Benefits of implementing the Framework

This Framework will help you to embed a culture of high performance and continuous improvement in your service.

Continuous improvement is a systematic and ongoing effort to improve services, products and processes, which focuses on incremental and measureable improvements. Organisational cultures founded on continuous improvement consistently identify and implement solutions that bring about positive changes to the organisation and its clients.

The Framework consolidates key quality documents for the career industry, bringing all of the standards and principles together and eliminating redundancies. This Framework will help you more easily and efficiently manage the requirements and obligations of the career industry quality documents.

To support quality and high performance, this has been complemented by a balanced approach, the benefits of which can include:

·  Strengthened decision making and transparency by collecting and utilising robust and objective evidence

The Framework supports rigor in planning, reporting and evaluation, and encourages consideration of strategic activities that add most value to your service and participants.

·  Reinforcing your service as one driven by quality and performance

By implementing processes to continuously improve, you are demonstrating to service staff, participants, stakeholders and the community that you are driven by performance and quality. This promotes trust and confidence in the service, and may help you to attract participants and partnerships.

·  Promoting ‘buy-in’ from employees and stakeholders in delivering a quality, responsive service

Involving those identified in target audience and stakeholders will help them to identify their contribution and feel ownership to the service’s mission. In turn, this may support increased productivity and service effectiveness and quality.

Applying a balanced approach

A balanced approach underpins the Framework, examining the service from four perspectives – governance, business processes, service delivery and external relationships. Together, the quadrants provide a thorough, holistic and balanced perspective of quality for short-term performance and long-term value creation.

Under each quadrant are elements, sub-elements and quality indicators– these help drill down into the detail of what a quality service looks like. It’s hierarchical, as shown below.

Elements and sub-elements are simply headings that describe the type of activity that supports quality. The full Framework is outlined in Appendix 1.

Quality indicators describe specific activity across all quadrants that need to happen to ensure participants receive a consistently high quality service, both presently and in the future.

Conducting the assessment – a step-by-step approach

This step-by-step process will help you to systematically assess the performance of your service, identify what’s working well and where improvement is needed, and put in place action plans to continuously improve.

Step 1. Deciding where to start

Before starting your review, take the time to carefully read through the Quality Framework and this guide, and familiarise yourself with the supporting templates. As you do so, consider your approach to conducting the review:

·  What is going to make your review succeed?

·  Who will be involved in the review? How will they know when, why and what they’ll be called on to contribute?

·  Do you need additional resources to undertake the review?

·  Do you have access to relevant records and documentation? If not, who does?

·  If you have conducted reviews previously, what did and didn’t work last time?

This Framework is most effective when a range of different stakeholders work through it together and contribute to priority setting and action planning. You may decide to form a working group to conduct the review, which brings together stakeholders outlined in target audience and stakeholders. This will also help to promote ownership of outcomes across the service.

It is strongly recommended that reviews are conducted annually and encompass all quadrants. This will help you to regularly ‘stocktake’ your entire business in a thorough and holistic manner, and capture any synergies across different areas of the Framework. Actions arising from your assessments should be reviewed more frequently.

If you have any questions or are unsure of anything, check your understanding with the Department of State Development’s Employment Directorate.

Key considerations:

·  Identify who needs to be involved e.g. Grantee, subcontractor, and who will lead the work

·  Ensure sufficient time and resources are allocated to identify the evidence and assess each quality indicator

·  Decide how and where evidence will be collated e.g. hard copies in folders, files on desktop

Step 2. Reviewing and assessing

After determining how the review will proceed, it’s time to start bringing together and analysing the evidence. The Assessment template (in Appendix 2) has been designed to help you capture and assess evidence against each quality indicator.

a)  Collecting evidence

Evidence is defined as facts, statements or objects that are helpful to form a conclusion or judgement[1]. For this Framework, evidence includes documented systems and processes, observable practice and outcomes measured and achieved. The below table outlines the definition of each type, and provides some examples. A more comprehensive list of examples can be found in Appendix 5.

Each quality indicator could be supported by all three types of evidence, which will help you to demonstrate that the activity described by the quality indicator is well-embedded in the service. The types of evidence available or not available could also help you to make a judgement about future action.

Including different stakeholders in the review should help to collect a wider, more comprehensive range of evidence.

Evidence types
Documented systems and processes / Observable practice / Outcomes measured and achieved
The systems and processes that the service has in place, which are communicated by way of written documents.
Examples: internal policy, procedures, guidelines, plans, strategies. / Behaviours and practices that have been observed, preferably by multiple people and/or on multiple occasions.
Examples: staff performance reviews, participant/stakeholder feedback. / Determinations and evaluations of the results of an activity, plan and/or process.
.
Examples: KPIs achieved, action plans implemented, outcomes for participants.

Use the Assessment template to briefly describe each piece of evidence and how it contributes to meeting the quality indicator. You may also find it useful to note here where the evidence is located, if it is not being collated in a central place.

Key considerations:

·  What evidence or advice is needed to properly and comprehensively assess each quality indicator?

·  Is there any evidence missing, and how do we obtain it?

·  Refer back to key career industry quality documents for the detail of each principle.

b)  Assessing the evidence

Once the evidence has been compiled for a quality indicator, use the Assessment template to assess the extent to which the service is accomplishing the activity described by the quality indicator.

It is important that clear and consistent definitions are used when conducting your self-assessment – you may use or adapt these recommended definitions:

Met fully / Evidence from a range of different evidence types strongly and comprehensively suggests the quality indicator is being met consistently to a very high standard
Met partially / Some evidence across one or a few different evidence types strongly suggests the quality indicator is being met most of the time to a high standard
Not met / Some evidence across one or a few different evidence types suggests the quality indicator is not being met most of the time and/or is not to a high standard
Cannot assess / There is limited evidence available across one or a few different evidence types, so as to not support an assessment

Next, use the Rating and Assessment template to rate the importance and impact of the quality indicator and its current status in your service – you may use or adapt these recommended definitions:

Very high / Activity described by the quality indicator is of vital importance to service operation – without this, operations could cease and/or service outcomes may be significantly compromised
AND
Key* documented systems and processes, observable practice and/or outcomes measured and achieved are not in place or are ineffective/of poor quality.
High / Activity described by the quality indicator is important to service operation – without this, operations and/or service outcomes are much less effective
AND
Key* documented systems and processes, observable practice and/or outcomes measured and achieved are not in place or are ineffective/of poor quality.
Moderate / Activity described by the quality indicator is valuable to service operation – without this, operations and/or service outcomes are less effective or efficient
AND
Key* documented systems and processes, observable practice and/or outcomes measured and achieved are somewhat ineffective/of poor quality or inefficient.
Low / Activity described by the quality indicator is useful to service operation – however, without this operations and/or service outcomes are only mildly affected;
AND
Key* documented systems and processes, observable practice and/or outcomes measured and achieved are in place and mostly effective, efficient and of good quality.

*In this context, key means those systems and processes, observable practice and outcomes measured and achieved that significantly support meeting the quality indicator.

Lastly, use these ratings to ‘calculate’ priorities for action. For each quality indicator, locate the relevant value on the Priority Calculation Matrix below, by identifying the self-assessment rating on the vertical axis and the importance/impact rating on the horizontal axis.